Italian Alps

Their teeth to the polished block.

    R. Browning.

PASSO DI REDORTA – VAL VERZASCA – A BROKEN ROAD – LOCARNO – VAL CANOBBINA – VAL VIGEZZO

Val Maggia is not the only unknown valley which opens on the famous lake. Close beside it, and hemmed in between its mountains and those on the west of Val Leventina, lies a still narrower and more obscure recess, Val Verzasca. In olden days the natives of this glen bore a bad name. In 1490 a writer speaks of them as 'homines sylvestres sparsim ferarum ritu degentes;'[9 - Domenico Macaneo, in his Verbani lacus locorumque adjacentium chorographica descriptio, quoted by Studer, Physische Geographie der Schweiz. These notices suggest that the Val Verzascans may be a relic of some primitive tribe, but I have no authority for imputing to them ethnological importance.] and the reputation for wildness so early acquired still sticks to them. Knives are said to be more frequently drawn among them, and with worse consequences, than in any other district of Ticino. But there is no record of a stranger ever having suffered from this tendency to blood-letting, and the ill-repute of the valley can hardly be held accountable for its neglect by travellers.

So great has been this neglect that the Federal map was to us the chief and almost the only source of information. Thus studied, the peculiarities of Val Verzasca are seen to be the shortness of the side glens which branch off the main stem, and the uniformly great elevation of the surrounding ridges. From Bignasco a tolerably direct path leads over to Brione by Val d'Ossola, and from what we saw I recommend the next visitor to try this way in preference to the longer circuit which we were induced to take by a conscientious desire to see the head of the main Val Verzasca and an unfounded fancy that a carriage road implied vehicles of some sort.

From San Carlo in Val di Prato a track leaving the path to Piz Campo Tencca circles round the westward-facing hillside, and, above a waterfall, traverses beside the torrent a narrow glen. Beyond some châlets we penetrated a sombre funnel, choked with avalanches. It expanded at its upper end into a basin floored with snow and hemmed in by cliffs picturesquely broken and green with underwood. The stream which poured down them was received at the bottom under a snow-arch, bold in its span as an old Italian bridge. A few yards east of the water-channel a goat track, sometimes difficult to follow, climbs the steep slope and the rocks above it, where the easiest course is only marked by the goats' droppings. Hands as well as feet are useful, but there is no difficulty for anyone accustomed to mountains.

Above the cliff we found a wide sloping meadow covered with cows. At first sight their presence seemed only to be accounted for by magic or a medium-like faculty in the herd for self-elevation. But I believe due enquiry would have established the existence of a rationalistic explanation in the shape of a roundabout staircase not beyond the powers of an Italian heifer.

The lowest saddle in the high ridge before us was the Passo di Redorta. Despite the beauty of the day there was little distant view and no peak near enough at hand to tempt to further exertion. Val Maggia itself was almost hidden by the vertical lines of a bold, many-headed buttress, and the eye ranged over the wilderness of its mountain-ridges, a savage expanse of ruined gneiss naked of snow and void of prominent peaks or bristling ridges. The rock cannot, like the firmer granites of Val Masino or the Adamello, offer any stubborn resistance to the action of the atmosphere. Hence the mountain-tops are one mass of comparatively level ruin. Those who have looked down from some Syrian hilltop on an ancient city, of which the ponderous materials cumber the ground, while not a column is left standing, may exactly picture to themselves the scene of desolation now offered on a vastly larger scale to our eyes by the ranges of Val Maggia. In contrast the head of Val Verzasca, lying as it were at our feet, was green, bright, and inviting.

We were joined on the pass by a young Verzascan, returning from a visit to relatives at Peccia, laden with a store of simple delicacies, such as white bread, honey and cheese. The pains he was at to transport such a burden suggested comparative poverty in the land we were entering. We descended together, but there was no need of any guide, as the valley lay always straight before us, and the ground, though excessively steep, was not precipitous. Near the foot of the descent a pretty fall tumbles off the right-hand hillside.

A mile further, at a waters-meet, stands Sonogno, a deserted savage-looking cluster of dingy stone houses, which, but for the whitewashed church, might be in Ossetia. There were no inhabitants in the streets, and those indoors, with the first instinct of savages and wild animals, hurriedly thrust their heads back again through their little square windows when we asked questions. It was with difficulty we succeeded in getting one word, a simple negative, in reply to our demand for a carriage.

For to this extreme corner of the mountains civilisation advances in the shape of a road which has been carried up from the lake at an expense of over £15,000, shared between the cantonal government and the communes. Its engineers would seem to have determined to make no needless ascent, and at the cost of cuttings, embankments, and lofty bridges, they have carried out their purpose in the most thorough manner. The workmanship of this remote track would bear comparison with most of the highways of Europe. But the proverb of the ass taken to the water's brink seems to apply to Val Verzasca. No force seems capable of inducing the upper villages to use the boon intended for them. As in the East a few years ago the old camel-track over Lebanon was still trodden bare, while the grass grew on the new road made by French enterprise, so here no wheels seemed ever to have worn in the fresh stones. The nine miles to Lavertezzo must be walked.

The upper branch of the valley, although hemmed in by bold mountains, is somewhat monotonous, and the foreground is too often defaced by a broad torrent-bed. At the village of Brione Val Verzasca displays the first landscape which is likely to leave any lasting impression. The range on the right suddenly breaks off in a perpendicular crag of singular boldness; and as the road, raised on a lofty embankment, crosses a tributary stream a long vista of receding lines of cliff and chestnut trees is seen for some minutes. This is Val d'Ossola, through which runs the shortest and probably the most beautiful path to Bignasco.

From this point to the lake for some fifteen miles the bed of the Verzasca is simply a narrow cleft in the mountains, sinking deeper and deeper, until at last it opens upon Lago Maggiore, at the village of Gordola, opposite Magadino. Below Brione a great barrier, probably a mountain-fall, is thrown right across the valley, which at the same time drops considerably. The road makes a zigzag amidst the wildest tangle of boulders and chestnut-trees, then leaps boldly on to the opposite rocks, and creeps along a shelf blasted beside the blue tumbling stream.

As far as Lavertezzo the trench is wide enough at the bottom to give room for a few fields and houses. But this is not an agricultural district. The natives we met, a strong, wild-looking race, were all stone-quarriers, woodmen, or charcoal-burners. Many of them were employed where a timber slide, built on an unusual scale, falls over the cliffs from the mouth of a side-glen in the western range, through which a hill-path leads over to Maggia.

For the next few miles the valley bends constantly, and Lavertezzo seems to be always round the next corner. As at last we approach the village the river, sliding out from amidst huge grey boulders, two of them joined by a slender arch, is suddenly checked. The water rests motionless in a chain of the most delicious pools – deep-green, transparent bubbling crystals – contained in basins of the whitest granite, smooth and polished as if made for a Roman bath. Henceforth it glistens no more in the sunshine, but roars or rests deep in a hidden cleft until it flows out to the fever-stricken plain of Gordola.

Lavertezzo itself consists of a campanile, a church, and a few white houses, crowded into a green corner above the meeting of two streams. Its name is adorned in maps with one of those curly horns which indicate a post-station. Here at least we reckoned on finding something on wheels. But a difficulty hitherto only dimly foreshadowed now met us full in the face with stunning force. Our hopes were crushed by a universal outcry of 'strada rotta.' But we still did not comprehend the full force of the emphasis laid on the last word, and while accepting the fact that our legs must carry us over the remaining eighteen kilomètres to Locarno, looked for nothing more than the ordinary amount of breakage caused by a mountain-storm – one bridge gone, or at most two. What we had seen in the upper valley was not of a character to prepare us for any very serious damage.

But the whole force of the great thunderstorm three nights before had concentrated itself on the ridges round the head of Lago Maggiore. The rain-torrents rushing with unrestrained fury from these lofty crests (7,000 to 8,000 feet) down the barren hillsides, and gathering impetus with every foot of fall, had filled and overflowed all the channels, tearing as they went huge rocks out of either bank, mixing themselves with the soil till they became as much earth as water, and sweeping away every obstruction which lay across their path.

Everywhere the steep slopes, saturated by the terrible deluge, had given way. The road might be said to be effaced rather than broken. For mile after mile two-thirds of its breadth was buried in mud washed down from the upper hillsides.

The post-house of Vogorno, a solitary farm by the roadside, was in a lamentable plight. The stables had been carried away, and the whole front of the house was blocked with mud. At every few yards we came on immense barricades, the work of some puny trickle which now wandered almost invisible amongst the ruin it had wrought. In the least exposed spots stones as big as a hat-box were lying in the middle of the road. The larger torrents, thought worthy of bridges, had carried away the arches set over them, leaving deep gaps to be clambered round. Even a magnificent bridge, standing at a height at least 200 feet over a lateral ravine, had been undermined and swept bodily away. It was necessary to descend into the torrent-bed and scramble up the opposite bank. Another still loftier arch, one of the most striking works of its kind in the Alps, had alone escaped the general destruction, owing to its piers being built into the solid rock about 150 feet above the ordinary water-level.

Yet, though the road was destroyed and the hillside scored in many places by the terrible paths of the rocks and torrents, the general aspect of the landscape was hardly affected. The left bank, round the deep ravines of which the road, or what was left of it, circled incessantly, was always steep and broken. But across the river the chestnuts and rocks yielded, as the hills rose, to vineyards and fields of maize. The valley was all ravine, but high on the mountains were sunny bays and promontories, shining with villages bright and festal as only Italian villages are. A horizontal streak drawn across the face of a range of mural cliffs was the road linking these communes to Locarno. In the variety and boldness of its scenery this portion of Val Verzasca seemed to us equal to any of the southern defiles of the Alps.

At last the gorge expanded, and the broad surface of the most beautiful of the Italian lakes spread across the centre of the landscape. The most beautiful, for to me it seems that spaciousness of shining surface – the quality which made Thrasimene so dear to Perugino – is an essential in lake scenery. In narrow, many-winding lakes the multitude of straight shore lines is apt to cut off harshly all the mountain shapes, and to be an offence to the eye, which would be better contented by the accidents of a green valley than with the smooth water-floor. The landscapes of Como, fascinating in their rapid changes – now picturesque and gay, now wild and severe – are too confined and crowded for perfect beauty. Garda is noble in its sealike expanse, but the shapes of its hills cannot compare with the stately Greek charm of the mountains round Baveno.

Above Gordola a whole hillside had given way, and the great earthslip had spread desolation amongst the lower vineyards. The brown ruin made a sad foreground to the exquisite view over the pale evening lake and the glowing hills. We took a short cut through the broken-down terraces to the bridge over the Verzasca, where we joined the high-road from Bellinzona to Locarno. Between us and the lake ran, in all the ugliness of unfinished novelty, a railway embankment.

Still three miles to Locarno, and no carriage on the road or boat on the water. In the morning we had walked over a seven hours' pass, including an ascent of 6,000 feet; since midday we had covered some eighteen miles of road. Yet, although all more or less way-weary, we accepted the further march without much murmur. At a certain stage in the day the muscles become dogged and go on with machine-like energy, and to maintain the power of enjoyment it is only necessary to keep the mind from worrying itself with idle speculations as to details of time and distance. It is the old story. The sad or the impatient heart collapses, while the contented one 'goes all the day;' and in an Italian dusk on the shores of Maggiore it is easy to be contented.

Locarno itself had suffered severely from the storm. The channel of the small stream which divides the town had been overfilled by a deluge of horrible black mud, which, bursting out like a lava flood into the streets, had flowed down them, breaking into the shops on the ground floor, and finally spreading itself out in a pool several feet deep over the wide open space in front of the Albergo della Corona.

Locarno is pretty well accustomed to violent catastrophes. A few years ago the roof of the principal church gave way under a heavy fall of snow, and, crashing in during mass, killed or wounded half the congregation. Inundations are almost as frequent as earthquakes at Torre del Greco, and here, as on the Bay of Naples, familiarity with the outrages of nature seems to breed indifference, if not contempt. The population of Locarno took the damage done as much as a matter of course as the 'Times' reader in September a shocking railway accident. The men in their broad felts and the women with their fans were, as we entered, all abroad for the evening stroll, chatting and looking on cheerfully at the labourers still at work removing the rubbish. Shopkeepers had already reopened their stores, and were endeavouring to remove from their wares the traces of the recent mud-bath.

No lives had been lost here, but across the water at Magadino the storm had been more fatal. Several houses had been carried into the lake, and so suddenly that in one case the inhabitants were drowned.

Next to Val Maggia, Val Centovalli is the largest of the valleys which open on the fertile plain behind Locarno.[10 - Between the two valleys mentioned above is Val Onsernone (see Alpine Guide, p. 315, and Appendix) penetrated for some distance by a carriage-road. In a lively article in the fifth Jahrbuch of the Swiss Alpine Club, Herr Hoffmann Burkhardt describes the scenery as most varied and charming, and the road 'as a magnificent example of a mountain-road, and a most striking evidence of the talent of the Tessiners in this department of human industry.'] It is, in fact, not so much a valley as a broad line of depression through the hill-region separating the basin of Domo d'Ossola from the lake. The opening thus offered by nature has, owing probably to political jealousy, never been taken advantage of. The lower Val Centovalli is Italian, the upper basin of the Melezza and the short eastern Val Vigezzo Swiss, and no road passable for wheeled vehicles crosses the frontier. On the whole, however, lovers of nature gain. But for political exigencies Val Canobbina might never have been pierced.

This glen, as its name implies, opens behind Canobbio, a town reached in two hours from Locarno, by a most beautiful road along the western shore of the lake. On the hillside facing north, and a mile inland, is a large bathing establishment or summer health-resort known as 'La Salute,' and chiefly frequented by Italians. The situation is charming, high enough to command over a green foreground the whole upper bay of the lake closed by the bold mountains of Val Verzasca.

Val Canobbina is rather a tangle of glens than a valley. The road climbs at once into a deep dell, refreshed by perpetual waters and green with verdure only broken where the jagged rocks close in on the stream to form a gorge, or 'orrido' in the local phrase. Oak thickets and chestnut copses clothe the slopes; cyclamens, common as daisies at home, bend their graceful heads on every sunny bank.

At one spot four valleys join, and it is impossible to guess which will be chosen. The road plunges into the narrowest, and forces its way near the torrent, until, suddenly turning in steep zigzags to scale the hillside, it breaks off altogether.[11 - The carriage-road was expected to be finished throughout in 1875.] The carriage halts, the driver shouts, and tall, handsome girls drop down the stairs from the neighbouring village of Orasso, and eagerly grasp the luggage. The ascent is continued by a rough path, which circles terrace-like for several miles between white hamlets and green hills. Nature shows herself here very friendly, but also very southern, and full of a delicate subdued beauty quite apart from the more homely charm of northern scenery.

The glen again twists round on itself, and we almost fancy ourselves in an issueless labyrinth, when the road suddenly reappears at our feet, and boldly rushes into a tunnel which might not be much on a railroad, but is a great work for a country byway.

On the further side the road, blasted out of the face of the rock, makes its entrance into an upland basin, still part of Val Canobbina. On a brow in its centre rises the village of Finero. The festival of the patron saint of the church had collected thither all the neighbourhood, and given occasion for a very tournament of bowls, a game which in the lives of Northern Italians fills the place occupied by croquet in those of some of our curates and officers.

Beyond Finero a broad low ridge sends down a stream northward into the Italian head of Val Centovalli, and the road rapidly descends through pine forests. We are no longer in a mountain-maze, the hills stand back and leave in their midst a happy oasis crowded with cultivation and life, and blest with the gifts alike of mountain and of plain, the fresh Alpine breeze and water, and the sun and fertility of Lombardy. In the midst of maize-fields lie spacious well-built towns; on the slopes, shaded by their walnut and chestnut groves, a score of brilliant whitewashed villages.

What a living brightness in southern lands is the white which in the north, among our duller colours and opaque atmospheres, is only a dead chill! Beyond the Alps it seems the appropriate colour for men's homes. We in England can ill afford to dispense with the suggestion of warmth and dryness given by red brick and tiles. But domestic architecture is a subject too painful for the victims of ninety-nine years' leases and speculative builders to think about. Few Londoners can bear to look without a shudder on the outside of what they call 'home.' If the old fashion of white paint was chilly, it was at least better than the new stucco squares and streets, the exact colour of our native fogs and roadways. Why should we live in a monotone of mud, as if we were some species of snail whose only chance in the struggle for existence lies in making itself and its shell undistinguishable from the surroundings?

The plain in which stand the prosperous towns of Malesco and Santa Maria Maggiore, though called Val Vigezzo, sends down its torrent to Locarno. Such an imperceptible bank of heather as divides the Drave from the Pusterthal still severs us from the western Val Vigezzo. In clear weather Monte Rosa must shine upon this upland basin; in the pouring rain all I saw of the drive to Domo d'Ossola was a narrow picturesque river-bed and a wide sodden plain, at the end of which a ferry close to the town gates carried us and our carriage across the swollen waters of the Tosa.

CHAPTER III.

WEST OF THE BERNINA

THE PEAKS AND PASSES OF VAL MASINO.[12 - This and the following chapter were originally written as a paper to be read before the Alpine Club.]

Il montera, descendra, traversera, remontera, redescendra, retraversera, etcetera. —French Play.

And when I most go here and there,
I then do most go right.

    Shakespeare.

THE MOUNTAINS OF VAL MASINO – THE AVERSTHAL – MADRISER PASS – VAL BREGAGLIA – ZOCCA PASS – PROMONTOGNO – VAL BONDASCA – PASSO DI FERRO – BAGNI DEL MASINO – PASSO DI MONTE SISSONE – THE FORNO GLACIER

To the crowd, which having sat down in a draught on the roof of Europe spends its time mostly in bemoaning the cold, to the water-drinkers of St. Moritz or the pensioners of Pontresina, the mountains of Val Masino are unknown. Yet had they eyes to see they might often be attracted by the vision of two square towers rising far beyond the blue lakes and the green ridge of the Maloya, and shining like an enchanted keep through the warm haze of Italy.[13 - See Vignette.] They are indeed the ramparts of Paradise, for on the further side they look down upon the gardens of Lago di Como.

Even to climbers this western wing of the Bernina has remained little known. So long ago as 1862 Messrs. Kennedy and Stephen carried at the second assault its proudest peak, the Monte della Disgrazia. But I could count on my fingers the names of all the Englishmen who have since penetrated Val Masino. Foreign Alpine Clubs have for the most part held aloof. The Swiss have found enough to do elsewhere, and have not as yet chosen Val Bregaglia – politically a Swiss valley – as the 'gebiet' of one of the summer 'excursions' in which they contrive to combine so happily the features of a prolonged picnic and a mountain-battue. That practical, and in some respects energetic, body, the Italian Alpine Club, is only beginning to turn its attention to a district containing one of the few wholly Italian peaks of over 12,000 feet.

Those who have been already somewhat disappointed in the Upper Engadine and the heart of the Bernina will perhaps argue that there cannot be much worth seeing in its extremities, where the peaks are lower and the ice-fields as a whole less extensive. Such an assumption, however, would be ill-founded. For scenic effects, every one will allow, the measurement of a mountain must be taken, not from the sea level, but from its actual base. Moreover the lower the base the richer and more varied will be the contrast in vegetation. On applying this test we find that the Punta Trubinesca[14 - Herr Theobald states that the villagers of Bondo give the name of Trubinesca to the Cima di Tschingel of the Federal map. Herr Ziegler, the author of a new and very beautifully executed map of this portion of the Alps, confirms this statement, adding that 'Turbinesca' is the correct spelling, and he has accordingly changed the names of the two peaks. As a rule, local usage should, no doubt, be followed. But in the present instance, the mistake is of such long standing, that an endeavour to correct it would only lead to confusion, and I have adhered to the nomenclature of the Federal map. It is much to be regretted that Herr Ziegler's map is wholly inaccurate with regard to the glaciers of Val Masino, and the position of many of the ridges dividing its lateral glens.] towers 8,500 feet above the chestnut trees of Promontogno, while Piz Bernina itself rises 1,000 feet less, and far more gradually, above Pontresina. The icy ridges of the Disgrazia soar 11,000 feet above the vineyards of the Val Tellina, or as much as Mont Blanc above Courmayeur.

The peaks, moreover, are of a durable granite. They have, therefore, that combined boldness of outline and solidity which often belongs to this hardy rock. Other mountains have the air of having been built up; granite peaks seem rather to have been rough-hewn like a sculptor's block out of a larger mass. In glaciers the group possesses almost every known variety. The Bondasca and the eastern glaciers of the Disgrazia worthily represent the frozen cataract type, tumbling in broken billows from cope to base of the mountain; the Albigna is an ice-lake fed by huge snow-basins; the Forno a stately stream surpassing in length the Morteratsch.

Here, however, I gladly break off from the conventional tone of recommendation in which discoverers are apt to assert their own merits.

For the people who either cannot or will not walk, the large class which, taking advantage of the shade of contempt already attached to the epithet by Vatican infallibility, I may venture to call the 'Subalpine Club,' Val Masino has few attractions. Inaccessible on three sides except to pedestrians, this valley will probably remain for long a sure refuge for the misanthropic climber driven away from the peaks of the central Bernina by the demands of the guides or the clatter of his fellow-countrymen.

In the summer of 1864 I set out from Splugen with two companions and François Devouassoud for the Bernina. Our route led us through the Avers Thal, a cross-road of travel still but little frequented, though no better reason than fashion can be assigned for its neglect. For mile after mile the Averser Rhein, a strong blue-grey torrent, leaps and roars between masses of marble crag tinted with lichens, and clasped about by huge pine-roots. Tributary streams rush down from the rugged precipices towering on either side the gorge, and shoot with a creamy rush into the deep cleft which holds the larger flood.

Above the long defile lies a broad grassy upland dotted with some of the highest villages in Europe, and encompassed by green slopes which divide the waters of three seas. The landscape is, it is true, tame to the eye; but on a sunny August morning, when the vast hayfield is alive with mowers and the air fragrant with the smell of ripe grasses, it contains much to tickle other senses than sight.